Christmas Activity and Craft Ideas for Babies and Toddlers

Looking for things to keep little ones busy this festive season? We’ve pulled together some cool creative craft ideas and activities for toddlers for you to enjoy. Whether your son or daughter loves messy play or you’re looking for some homemade gift ideas, we’ve rounded up some fab family friendly ideas for you from our blogger network. Let’s take a look at Christmas crafts toddlers can make for parents, gifts or just for fun…

Christmas Sensory Play Idea

What you need:

Tuff tray or big dish or bowl

Jumbo oats coloured with food colouring

Eco-friendly glitter

Festive items to find e.g. pom poms

If you’d like to try out something simple that both older babies and toddlers can enjoy, a festive themed sensory play session can tick all the boxes. This example from Gillian Holbrook of My Three Little Strawberries uses coloured oats and eco-friendly Bio Glitter as a base for explorative play. Have a go yourself by adding food colouring to jumbo oats, mixing with Bio Glitter and adding things like pom-poms to find in the mixture. Gillian gave her daughter some jumbo tweezers for picking things up too. What a cute idea!

Creative Kids Christmas Personalised Wrapping Paper

What you need:

Black paper

Chalk pens

Cellotape, washi tape, twine or ribbon to secure

My toddler loves opening up the Christmas cards that are being delivered just now and has taken to adding extra decoration to them with her crayons too. This looks like a great activity to distract her from upgrading the cards dropping through the door. If you’re making homemade gifts from the kids to Mum, Dad, the grandparents or other relatives, would they like to make some cool DIY wrapping paper to wrap them up in? Another festive favourite activity from Gillian at My Three Little Strawberries – this paper uses black paper and liquid chalk pens for bespoke paper decoration.

Toilet Roll Snowflake Decorations

What you need:

Toilet rolls

Glitter

Glue – you could use spray glue

Hairspray

When plans are cancelled at the last moment or bad weather forces you indoors, it’s always great to have a craft activity you can do without a trip to the ships. This snowflake ornament DIY posted on Elisabeth William’s blog – Diary of a Yummy Mummy uses old toilet rolls along with craft cupboard staples such as glue and glitter. The result is a very pretty ornament that they’ll love pointing out to visitors or gifting to the grandparents. Be aware that this craft make does involve the use of hairspray to set the glitter, which you may want to do yourself with little ones out of the way. And all that glitter means this is definitely an activity that requires supervision and if you have one, a wipe clean tablecloth!

A Toddler Friendly Christmas Tree

What you need:

Lollipops

Paint and brushes

Ribbon

Glue

Small decorations

We’ve covered how to keep your tree safe from your toddler in an article on the blog and one of the suggestions was to let them have their own tree or a decorative version of it. This lollipop stick Christmas tree is another craft from Elisabeth published on our own site. Using paints, lollipop sticks, glue and ribbon along with some decorative items, it’s a really simple make for those just getting into craft activities.

Festive Footprint Pictures

What you need:

Child-safe paint

Paper or card

Brushes

Glue and any additional trimmings such as googly eyes

Struggling for gift ideas from your newborn to your other half? Creating keepsakes from footprints is a really popular and inexpensive gift or card idea, which Elisabeth from Diary of a Yummy Mummy covered before in this footprint pictures article on Bump, Baby & You. Using child-safe paint to create your baby’s footprint on card you can use the shape of the foot as a base to create all kinds of shapes and characters. You can then tailor your picture to the recipient’s interests to make things like cars or fish as seen in the image below.

To make this activity festive – try making a reindeer’s face, Christmas tree, snowman or other festive figures.

Bubble Painted Cards, Decorations or Pictures

What you need:

Paint

Paper

Straws

Washing up liquid

This is another good activity to keep in mind for unexpected free time since it uses a lot of items you probably have in your cupboards already. The decorative effect isn’t instantly recognisable as festive but you can create lovely patterns that can be cut out and turned into paper chains, baubles or used on Christmas cards. You can of course use traditional Christmas colours to make it feel festive too. You’ll find a how to on Nerys Hiller’s blog Nurture & Play, which talks you through creating this decorative paint effect using straws paint and washing up liquid. Be sure to supervise to make sure your toddler blows through the straw.